The Ammergau "Director's Cut" route

I enjoyed a great hike yesterday, getting the idea from Summitpost here. I headed out in tennis shoes, confident that the recent foehn wind had melted the considerable snowfall from the latter part of October. Parking at the wrong trailhead, I spent 20 annoying minutes walking on the flats outside of Graswang to get to the right place.









As I listened to interesting music, I quite enjoyed the hike up the Kuhalpenbach. After about 500 meters of elevation gain, I reached a road and walked east on it for a while, before leaving it for the hike up to the Hasenjoechl. Now I'd gained the ridge of the "Director's Cut." I would traverse this from this point in a wide clockwise rotation of about 270 degrees back to Graswang, bagging 8 named summits along the way.

It worked really well. I only encountered some tedious sections of snow at the Vorderer Felderkopf. Beyond that it was a beautiful fall day, with plenty of dry, brown grassy slopes. However the wind was quite strong a lot of the time.










I saw my first people below the Geissprungkopf, and then a continue stream of folks. It seems like a lot of people hike the three named summits on the western side of the great arcing ridge.

Back at the car at 2:45 pm, I realized that I could have easily climbed the entire ridge, throwing in the Ochsensitz, Ziegelspitz and Notkarspitze, certainly doable with another 1.5 hours of travel, and a bike shuttle to Ettal for the start. I'll do this next time, having already proposed the name: the "Extended Director's Cut." :D

Pictures on Flickr here.

Kranzhorn hike

Danno, Kris, the boys and I hiked up the Kranzhorn, maybe the last chance to do so before snow embraces it's summit and the little hut on the meadow beneath. It was really fun to have Danno join us! We had a great time on the hike to the summit, then enjoyed hanging around the hut a while on the way down. Thanks to Danno for joining!